UNIONS WILL MAKE LABOUR PAY FOR THEIR SUPPORT

JEREMY Corbyn heads to the Sussex coast this weekend for the annual Trades Union Congress conference with election fever swirling in the seaside air.

In his keynote speech on Wednesday, the ranting firebrand can be expected to try to fire up his union brothers and sisters for the campaign that is surely coming this autumn, even if he succeeds in delaying the poll longer than Boris Johnson would like. Mr Corbyn will be desperate for the party’s union paymasters to get his war chest jangling like a successful punt on one of the penny cascade machines on nearby Brighton Pier.

Union chiefs have already prepared the lengthy shopping list of rewards they want from a future Labour government in return for the investment in the fighting fund.

A string of motions at this year’s TUC gathering calls for a bonfire of legislation restricting mass industrial action. “Congress calls for the repeal of all the anti-union laws,” says a motion tabled by the Public and Commercial Union.

One popular demand this year is for online “e-balloting” in industrial disputes that make it far easier to call wildcat strikes.

Mr Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell are already intent on dragging Britain’s industrial relations back to the class-war era of the 1970s. Any further suggestions from their union pals for their hard-Left manifesto will be gratefully received.

Many unions will see a few multimillion pound donations to the Labour war chest as a small price to pay for setting the next government’s industrial strategy.

If Mr Corbyn does snatch the keys to Downing Street, the unions will be able to boast that they have never had it so good.